Using Link Farms as a Weapon?

After having read numerous aticles regarding the negative effects of FFA links (Link farms and their ilk) and even google's official don't do it with FFA Links page (http://www.google.co...asters/seo.html) ... . I wondered why search engines, would use such an off-site metric as a way to affect the site ranking, and if was used in this manner could it not be made into a SEO-weapon?

What's preventing me from spamming my competitors site(s) URL onto FFA sites, if this has such adetrimentall effect than it would certainly knock my competition down a few rungs on the SERP ladder.

MY conclusion is that the smart folks at google and other search engines, certainly don't condone the practice of FFA links , but most likely ignore such links in their ranking rather than using them as a way to penalize a URL? Otherwise this and other off-site techniques could be used as weapons in the SEO game.. What do you folks think?

There's a fundamental difference, I think, between a FFA site and a Link Farm. FFA links can't hurt a site, in large part because there's never any reason to link back to the FFA site. Even if one did, I doubt it would hurt because no one else (in their right mind) is doing it. Link Farms, on the other hand, pretty much demand a linkback, albeit usually in some round-about fashion. It's that linkback that can potentially have a negative effect.

GoogleBowling, eh? It can be done, but it takes the right links at the right time, pointed at the right site (one on the edge of the search engines' trust factors). I've seen the results of a test, however, that showed it was virtually impossible to "bowl" out a strong, trusted site from the SERPs. It's the newbies that you can kill with nasty link tactics.